Yasuo Yagi, DSc, emeritus member of the AACR, died November 14, 2014, at the age of 92. He was director of the Nippon Roche Research Center in Kamakura, Japan, until his retirement in 1986.
Born Nov. 24, 1921, in Nase-machi, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, Yagi graduated from Musashi High School in 1941 and in the same year entered Tokyo Imperial University, where he majored in chemistry and received a bachelor’s degree in 1943. He attended graduate school at Nagoya Imperial University (NIU), but withdrew in 1946. He was then chosen to study at College de France as a government scholar in 1950 and received a Docteur de l’University de Paris in 1952.
Yagi returned to NIU in August 1952, where he worked as a lecturer and then an assistant professor. He also worked as a research fellow at Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute in New York, and in 1957 was appointed assistant research professor of chemistry at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (UB) and senior research scientist at what is now known as Roswell Park Cancer Institute. In 1965, he was promoted to research professor of chemistry, a position he held until 1972. He also served as research professor of microbiology at UB, research professor at Niagara University in Lewistown, New York, and traveled to Japan as a special lecturer at Tokyo University.
Yagi returned to Japan in 1972 to take the director position at the Nippon Roche Research Center. He retired from this position in 1986, but continued to work at the company – now merged with Chugai Pharmaceutical – as an auditor until the time of his death.
In addition to the AACR, which he joined in 1967, Yagi was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Association of Immunologists, New York Academy of Sciences, and France’s Societe de Chimie Bioloque.
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